Dirt Bags Are Us

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First stop in Bolivia..... the Salt Falts (Solar de Uyuni).

We decided to wait a day or two in a nothing of a place called Uyuni for a big group to conglomerate and go on the tour together, what we didn´t anticipate, when waiting for the Irish that they had met James Attwood (Alex´s friend form Uni) and had told him "yeah come on the tour with us, we´re going with 3 Essex girls".... God knows what was said. So the 9 of us (the smoking Danish, Irish and us) departed Uyuni on the not so reliable Jeeps to go into the freezing desert.

The Salt Flats were amazing, its quite hard to believe that this vast space is the same size as Belgium. Geography time as always......When the Andes hit Bolivia, they seperate into two chains, locted in the middle is the salt flats (Solar de Uyuni). It´s just one vast plain of salt, but looks like glaciated landscape, and until the 60/70´s the Bolivians thought it was.

Our first night was spent at the bottom of a volcano, as you can imagine, very exciting stuff for me! In the morning we started out ascent. Dealing with altitude as well as trying to climb made breathing almost impossible, every five steps we took, we sounded like smokers of 60 yrs. The nuttest thing was the Danish lit up at the top of the volcano, I mean come on, how is that even possible, we couldn´t even breathe.

The tour was 4 days long, and in the middle of a salt desert, needless to say, there wasn´t very much washing going on, however I managed to get a cheeky wash in a geothermal hot spring. Lauren and Amy went all out and didn´t have any water touch them for the full four days, lol slightly winning in the stink race as she climbed the volcano (we had to leave poor poo behing with altitude sickness).

After the tour we returned to Uyuni, and wanted to make a quick escape to Potosi. Potosi is literally a mining city. All the men work in these mines in the most stressful conditions. They actually choose to work in shitter conditions as if they produce a lot of minerals they earn more money, however it works the other way.

The funniest thing is that although mining is the major income in this city, so is tourism........ So what did we do..... go on a mine tour, in real live working mine. So, Amy the brave, Lauren the alergic and Claire.... well probably the adventurous (why not, hay) went into the mines looking like something straight out of Armageddon. And of course still dealing with the altitude we decide, oh I know lets block our lungs up with dust, yeah that´ll make it easier to breathe.

As we crawled past the men at work, I thought these guys must be thinking "stupid gringos", we were literally choking on the dust. It was definitely an experience, and very interesting to see, but no way would I put myself through that again..... (I´m still coaghing up black balls).

OK the plan was, dirt bags and all, to get straight on a bus to Sucre, however, ´Oh predicable Boliva´..... there´s a strike and the lorry dirvers have blocked the roads, oh well. So we left the following day, all chuffed with ourselves that we were gonna take the shortest journey in our entire trip, a mere 3 hours. In Bolivia.... not so much. It took us 7 and a half hours to get to the border of Sucre, where we came to a sudden and non moving stop, as, of course more blockades! Myself and a couple of lads decide to go for a little wonder to see if we could walk through the parked up lorries. When we returned to the bus a local women was saying to me "peligroso, peligroso"........ oh, oh I thought to myself I´ve know this word..... Oh bollocks it means dangerous! Woops! So we spent the night in the bus and treked through the tons of lorries in the morning. With, once again the locals (not so much thinking this time) saying "stupid gringos".

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Photos

The Group
Stading in the only square in Uyuni waiting to go to the Solar de Uyuni.

We made it.
At the top of the volcano..... apparently we set a record.

Just going to work.
Mining tour in Potosi.